Electronic Communication
Email Marketing
Email marketing is the act of sending a commercial message, typically to a group of people, using email. In its broadest sense, every email sent to a potential or current customer could be considered email marketing.
Stronger than ever, is your business email marketing strategy driving leads for sales growth?
Why Email Marketing?
Despite the rise of social media and unsolicited spam email, email remains the most effective way to nurture leads and turn them into customers.
There are many reasons you should make email marketing one of your top priorities, but here are the top 3:
1. Email is the number 1 communication channel. Did you know that at least 99% of consumers check their email daily?
2. You own your list. On any social media platform, your account (along with all your fans and posts) could be suspended or deleted at any time, for any reason, without notice. However, you own your email list. No one can take those leads away from you.
3. Email just converts better. People who buy products marketed through email spend 138% more than those who do not receive email offers. In fact, email marketing has an ROI (returns on investment) of 4400%.
Email is simply the best way to make sales online. Let us review our email platform, data, and strategy and implement first-stage changes to improve performance
Types of Email
Despite the rise of social media and unsolicited spam email, email remains the most effective way to nurture leads and turn them into customers. There are 10 different types of email marketing that we consider to be relevant for any business:
- Newsletter emails
- Special offer emails
- Milestone emails
- Review request emails
- Welcome emails
- Curated content emails
- New product announcement emails
- Abandoned cart emails
- Progress emails
- Confirmation emails
The type of emails you consider for your business will outline your email strategy.
Be Compliant
You need to be careful that your email marketing campaign isn't overstepping the boundaries of privacy and anti-spam laws.
Be aware of the Legal Requirements before you send Marketing led emails to customers
Email statistics to make you think
20 Reasons Why Email is Essential for your Business
- There are 897 million mobile email users worldwide.
- The total number of worldwide email accounts is expected to increase to over 4.3 billion accounts by year-end 2020.
- 247 billion emails are sent every day. This equates to one email every 0.00000035 seconds.
- 76% of UK businesses describe email marketing as ‘important’ or ‘very important’.
- 66% of marketers report that email delivers an ‘excellent’ or ‘good’ ROI
- 8% of businesses achieve more than half of their sales through email.
- The estimated average return from email marketing has increased by 16% since 2012 (£21.48 to £24.93 per £1 spent).
- 69% of B2C strategists have the ability to calculate revenues generated by email marketing activities, compared to 48% of B2B marketers.
- 69% of B2B marketers claim that they get back more than £6 for every £1 invested in email marketing.
- 21% of B2C strategists claim that they get back at least £61 from every £1 invested in email marketing.
- Email marketing continues to contribute 30% of all digital revenues.
- 91% of consumers check their emails daily.
- 66% of consumers have made a purchase online as a result of an email marketing message.
- Emails that include social sharing buttons have a click-through rate of 158% higher than those that do not.
- Professionals spend an average of 13 working hours each week in their email inbox.
- 68% of UK smartphone owners use their device to check email. Only text messaging was more popular (92%), while using the mobile web (66%) and social networking (63%) were close behind.
- 41% of emails are opened on mobile devices.
- But… more than half of UK businesses describe their mobile email strategy as ‘basic’ (39%) or ‘non-existent’ (22%).
- Over 70% of mobile purchasing decisions are influenced by promotional emails.
- A third of businesses referred to social media as an effective technique to drive email lists
Research by Constant Contact
Beware the Junk Folder
How to avoid ending up in your customers junk inbox
Deliverability is the most crucial and vital aspect any well thought, manufactured and produced email marketing campaign. What good is that content-rich email template if no one ever sees it? Junk and spam email settings are even more prevalent in the post-GDPR age, so take heed of our advice on how to avoid email delivery faux pau
Avoid Buying Data
For emailing purposes - the data is great for long -term nurturing for small to medium-sized businesses, but avoid if you want to send emails directly too. This audience is unchecked, unaware of who you are and therefore will have an email platform that doesn't recognise you and you will end up in the bin, or worse, unsubscribed.
Double Opt-In
For pure clarity, your customers reserve the right to receive marketing emails from you, so make sure they want to hear your promotional messaging by a double opt-in method. This is a simple way to guarantee what they want to hear and when. Always include the standard unsubscribe footer at the base of your emails
Avoid Attachments
Only send attachments if you are sending a personal email - anything attached to a marketing email will be instantly flagged and sent to the spam filters. If you have collateral you want to share with your audience, share via a link to increase CTA rates and drive traffic to your website.
Text to Image Ratio
The image you use with your email can cause issues if it is not a maintained text to image ratio of 80:20 - this meaning your image should stick to your template size and not be one that you do not own.
Become Whitelisted
Ask your loyal customers to 'whitelist' you - this practice is when a subscriber adds your email address to his or her address book - meaning your email will always be accepted.
View online and Alt-Text
Make sure you have the 'view online' option added to give viewers a second opportunity to view the email if their business block it. Also, check the alt-text is named in the image so that the system recognises what the image means even though it does not display it.
Be Personable
No one likes to be welcomed by an anonymous email - add a personal touch by naming the recipient of your email, as well as including a named constant in your sign off. Email filters will tend to ignore unnamed newsletters if not subscribed.
Spellcheck
By writing concise and clear email content copy, you are avoiding the spam police with bad spelling and grammar
Test, Test, Test
Test 100 times if you must, but test away before you send. Send tests to yourself, to friends, to colleagues or even use a number of spam test filter applications that can tell you how strong your email is.
My Email DEsign Guide
Design with Tables
Most email clients don't support formatting with div tags, so we recommend using tables to structure your email templates.
Specify Cell Width
Setting the width of all table cells renders them consistently across email clients.
Use Nested Tables
Many major email clients do not support floats, margins, or padding. To position elements and mimic margins and padding, use nested tables with specified cell widths.
Maximise Visibility
We suggest making your designs around 600 pixels wide.
Use Inline Styles
Some major email clients don’t support CSS in emails, so default to inline styles to format text
Specify Formatting
Define the font family, color, and sizes for all text in your template.
Avoid Flash
Most email clients, browser-based and desktop, strip out Flash content.
Avoid Empty Tags
Use email editor tools to strip empty HTML tags from source code.
Email case study
Generating leads from your email marketing
A B2B technology company launched an email campaign targeting IT decision-makers. The campaign featured personalized subject lines, highlighting industry-specific pain points. Compelling content offered solutions and invited recipients to a webinar. A/B testing optimized messaging. Result: 30% increase in webinar registrations, driving qualified leads and boosting sales pipeline.
Examples of my work
Email Marketing in Action
Adobe - Choose your plan
A one-click email promotion to offer a limited but direct choice for consumers to engage and answer a simple question
Where Pass London
Working with KidRated to build a multiple click email with graphic content to drive CTR to relevant landing pages
Oxford Online Pharmacy
Designed the new email template for Oxford Online Pharmacy that offered a friendly and easy to follow a structure that benefited older costumers
Common Everybody
A charity promotion inviting subscribers to 'tell their story' to win a chance of taking a journey of a lifetime
Cadburys
Worked on a collaboration between Cadburys and the Premier League with a 'spot the ball' game to win prizes
Twycross Zoo
Designed the email newsletter for Twycross Zoo to be sent to their members and subscribers
WinWire's
Creating statistics and information led Winwires to highlight sales wins to partners and account managers in the business.
Go Live Success
Designed and delivered an email to celebrate the 'go live' project success of a key customer - used to let internal and external audiences know about how we worked.
Give Blood UK
Wrote, designed, and was the lead feature of an employee engagement program newsletter that highlighted my blood donation to raise community spirit in the business.
My Email Platform Experience
